The Bill going out filmic on UK Gold?

Is it back to normal today or not? I'm not in, so I can't get to a TV.

The Bill was transmitted with the filmic look again today on Uktv Gold and also they had removed the black bands at the top and bottom of the screen!

Its just entering the era when The Bill became good for 18 months - currently its on the slide on ITV1!

Yeah it went out with the faux-film look again last night. Makes it look a bit strange, especially as I segued straight from that to the current episode on ITV!

They've been showing the episodes in full 4:3 for a while now; I'm pretty sure they used to be in 14:9 a while ago though. Does anyone know when the UK_X channels are going to start showing in 16:9? It's been the case for a good while now that a large proportion of what they show is made in wide.

It wasn't, it's always been 4:3 on UK Gold.

Whatever's happenned, it's obviously affected a whole batch of episodes. Obviously, the people at UKTV must have decided it's easier to put them out as they are rather than mess around making new copies of the affected episodes.

I have send UK Gold an email asking about this, so manybe they'll be able to shed some light on what's happenned.

UK Gold seem to be no more helpful. From what they say, their tapes arefrom te masters of what was shown on ITV (they claim the episodes were shown that way on ITV- we know they weren't) so something has gone wrong somewhere only no-one seems to know where or why. It seems quite likely that as UKTV don't know what's happenned, that the fault does lieat Fremantle's end. As someone said, probabally an incorrectly set up ARC, and no-one noticed (which seems odd).

Are you sure they've always been shown in 4:3? I'm sure I remember noticing it change from 14:9 to 4:3.

I hope they sort out the framerate issue soon anyway, it looks weird!! Like when Home & Away first switched.

It's always been 4:3 as long as I've been watcing it on UK Gold.

It's worse with The Bill though tha tit was with H&A because as least H&&A was shot for filmic, The Bill was shot for VT, and adding filmic picture to the VT style doesn't work (especailly the amount of fastpans in the show which are horribly blurred).

Looks like it's back to normal today.

Oh good, so it was just a minor blip then.

Back in reduced frame-rate mode again tonight, not sure whether it's been like this for long as I've missed the last few days episodes.

Also tonight's episode was the one where Boyden got shot, and as I recall they prefixed the credits with a promo for the new series of MIT at the time (as opposed to the next episode of The Bill). Hence on UKGold there was a rather dirty edit between the end of the episode and the start of the closers!

It's still there today. It all seems very odd. I still think it is a mistake for the reason as to there seems to be no reason for them to want to add the filmic look to older episodes- especially when it's not (thankfully) used on the current ones.

It's still there on UK Gold, but not on ITV- if it was at least on ITV there might be a reason for why they would want to add it to older episodes. I've emailed UK Gold, ITV & Fremantle, all of which are clueless of how the UK Gold re-runs have become filmic. The mystery continues, all I can guess is that an ARC or something at fremnatles end has been improperly set up (certinally thepoorer picture quality on the tites and credits says equipments been set up for field removal and), no-one's noticed and a whole batch of episodes sent to UKTV have gone out like this. It has been made stranger by a colpue of episodes going out this way, then a gap of over a week before it started again.